What’s the opposite of a perfect storm? Whatever it is, I think that’s what describes the circumstances surrounding the final two films from 2025 that I have yet to review, at least in this space. Usually I try to review something pretty much as soon as I see it, within 48 hours if I can manage it. There are exceptions, however, like when I know I’m going to include it in a batch post. This is usually for animated films that come out in waves, and which will likely not be competitive for the Animated Feature Oscar the next year.
The biggest situation that requires a delay is when I do festival coverage. Usually, whenever I see something at a film festival, there are rules established by the people in charge, likely due to whatever negotiations went on behind the scenes with the studios and public relations representatives to acquire the films in the first place. They limit what I can and can’t say, and when I can say it. I don’t mean that they dictate the content or ban negative criticism, more that they determine the length of reviews and establish an embargo date for when such critiques can be posted. Sometimes I’m allowed to do a full review, other times I’m limited to what’s called a “capsule” review, which is only a couple of paragraphs at most, gives the basic details of the story and cast, and maybe includes a general opinion or two. Sometimes the reviews can come out right away, others are to be held until a certain date, typically after the festival begins and/or after the film itself screens at the festival.
Either way, when I take part in this process, there are two steps that I always adhere to. The first is that the festival reviews are for my friends at No Rest for the Weekend, as that’s the outlet I’m representing when I get access to the films themselves. I don’t then copy and paste the review here, as that’s a big no-no. The second is that, while I incorporate some of my thoughts from those reviews into what I do here, I always wait until the films are given a general release. I’m not in favor of review embargoes in general, as they’re often abused as a means to silence critical press in advance of a movie’s release – especially if it’s a really bad movie – so that they can have full control over the marketing narrative to make money off the film, even if it sucks out loud. But I abide by the rules for the sake of continued access, and because it’s not any real inconvenience to me. If I was a professional critic for a newspaper or something, I’d probably be more irked.
Anyway, when the flick actually comes out in theatres, all bets are off, and everything is fair game. That’s why I wait. If I misused the permission structure to pan (or praise) something that’s only in a festival for my own gain, I’d betray the trust of my friends who got me in the door, and maybe even put them in a tight spot legally. It’s just not worth the aggravation.
The two films left in my queue fall under this umbrella. I saw both of them for festivals (Mill Valley and AFI Fest specifically) last fall, but they weren’t released publicly until Christmas. There are reviews on the NRFTW website that I did in the moment, but they’re not the ones I intended for this blog (I never grade the movies outside this space, for example). The ones I’m about to do are the ones that “count,” for want of a better term.
The problem for me, and the reason that I’m only now getting to them nearly three months after their releases, is because of why they were held. Both films were trying to campaign for Awards Season, specifically in the lead acting categories. Their chances at a nomination were slim, but like so many other successful gambles like Song Sung Blue and Marty Supreme, they waited until the very end of the calendar year to get their qualifying run, I’m guessing in hopes that being the last to arrive would keep them fresh in voters’ minds. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and because it didn’t work out for either entry, I had to deprioritize them in favor of those who did get recognition. Normally I’m able to clear them off my plate sooner than Oscar Eve, but this was a unique situation where there was just so much I had to actually watch and review after nominations came out, that these two were forced onto the back burner.
Now that everything else is done, it’s time to finally give them their due. Here are the final two movies of 2025 that I took in, with my sincere apologies that I couldn’t get to them sooner.
A Private Life
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and set in Paris, this is something like the fourth entirely French film that has featured Jodie Foster in the starring role, as she’s fluent in the language. That alone was enough for me to be intrigued, and she does give a compelling performance. However, there’s a major problem that hangs over the entire proceeding that ultimately makes for a good film, but far from a great one, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was what turned off prestige voters and rendered it a footnote for the year.
Foster plays Lilian Steiner, a Jewish-American psychiatrist living and working in Paris, having married a French ophthalmologist and raised a son there. As a quirk of her practice, she records every session on mini disks, a long outdated medium, as a reference tool for study after the fact, rather than actively listening to her patients in the moment. She’s clearly bored with the problems of her regulars, evidenced by the opening scene where a man named Pierre (Noam Morgensztern), who has been coming to her for years for help to quit smoking, says he’s finally succeeded thanks to a hypnotherapist, and that he believes he should sue her to get back all the money he spent on sessions with her over the years. Lilian is predictably dismissive, as am I, because we had pretty much the exact same scene in You Hurt My Feelings nearly three years ago.
Later, Lilian is approached by a woman named Valérie (Luàna Bajrami, recently seen in the Oscar-nominated – but still terrible – short film Two People Exchanging Saliva), who informs her that her mother Paula (Virginie Efira), one of Lilian’s clients, has died. When Lilian shows up to shemira to pay her respects, Paula’s husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric) becomes hostile and demands she leave, accusing her of being responsible for Paula’s death, which has been ruled a suicide. The experience causes Lilian some distress, and she begins crying at random, a behavior in direct opposition to her stoic, deadpan character, causing her to visit her now ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) and her estranged adult son Julien (Vincent Lacoste) for advice. After a while, Lilian is convinced that it’s impossible for Paula to have killed herself, so she must have been murdered.
This leads to the major problem with the film, and that’s the abandonment of logic for the sake of spectacle. I’m more than fine with fantastical or bonkers elements, but they’re completely out of place within this particular story. Lilian herself goes to the hypnotherapist (Sophie Guillemin) and has a delusional fantasy where she and Paula were musicians and secret lovers in the middle of Vichy France, trying to stay hidden while working for the resistance. She pulls Gabriel into several harebrained schemes to find evidence that either Simon or Valérie is the killer, based on pure conjecture and theories thinner than the crap you hear in the laziest true crime podcast. She even breaks into a woman’s house and wakes up a child who she then has to convince is just dreaming/sleepwalking to escape.
All of this is to avoid what is the most obvious and likely outcome, that Paula did indeed kill herself, and Lilian is just feeling guilty because she’s been going through the motions of her job for so long that she didn’t see the signs that something was up. Occam’s Razor exists for a reason, folks!
Don’t get me wrong, the film is well made. The cinematography is appropriately moody, as is the score. Foster herself gives a strong performance, though not nearly to the level of the women who were eventually nominated for Best Actress (and several others who were also left off). It’s a functional film, and it’s even exciting in places, so long as you turn your brain off and force yourself to not consider the most reasonable explanations for everything going on. Oftentimes that can be a lot of fun, but given that this is a story about a psychiatrist, intentionally letting go of the analytical part of your brain seems counterintuitive at best.
I enjoyed the movie, but I didn’t love it. Foster does a lot of the heavy lifting, and Bajrami deftly handles the rest of the task of at least creating intrigue. It’s a serviceable piece of entertainment, but it was never going to realistically have a chance at winning awards.
Grade: B-
The Choral
I saw this on the final day of AFI Fest last October for two main reasons. One is that I needed some more mainstream fare than the documentaries and international features that made up the bulk of the dozen or so films I took in. The second is that Ralph Fiennes was in the lead role, and coming off of the absolutely stupendous Conclave, you had to think there was at least an outside chance that the Academy would give him another shot at the Best Actor Oscar. The final product ended up being a nice, sweet, and safe bit of cinematic comfort food, which is perfectly pleasant and arguably needed after the year we had just endured as a species (and it’s only getting worse in 2026), but it also means that this was not a serious contender.
The film is set in a fictional Yorkshire town at the start of World War I, and to put it mildly, this is a very British story. The village is suffering its first losses, with a teenager named Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) making the rounds with his friend Ellis (Taylor Uttley) to deliver official condolence letters to the families of soldiers who’ve been killed in action. Meanwhile, the music director for the local choral society has decided to enlist himself, leaving the stodgy leaders, Duxbury and Fyton (Roger Allam and Mark Addy, respectively) looking for a replacement for their annual performance. Reluctantly, they decide to go with the best option available, Dr. Henry Guthrie (Fiennes), despite the societal red flags of him being an atheist, a homosexual (heavily implied but never explicitly stated), and the fact that he’s spent the last several years working in Germany.
Guthrie comes on board, and agrees to do his best to rein in any affinities and affectations that might make the locals uncomfortable, but he also insists on making some changes to the society, including holding open auditions and basically taking in all comers, because they need younger voices. This is how Lofty and Ellis join, along with their friend Mitch (Shaun Thomas). Also joining is a sprightly young woman named Bella (Emily Fairn), whose boyfriend Clyde (Jacob Dudman) is missing in action overseas. Finally, there’s Mary (Amara Okereke), a singer with an angelic voice, but who is initially frowned upon because she’s a member of the Salvation Army. It’s one of the odder elements of the film that there’s so much hesitation around religion, or lack thereof. Guthrie is given side-eye for being atheist, Mary is initially regarded with distrust because of her affiliation with the Salvation Army (instead of the fact that she’s black, which would be the more expected source of discrimination), and the decision to switch pieces from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (German affiliation) to Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is met with resistance because it mentions Purgatory and Elgar is Catholic.
All these different personalities come together in common cause, the respite of escapism that is a concert, which is ultimately the point of the entire film. Will a music performance get rid of the fears and anxieties of war? Of course not. But it’s still important to have these outlets as a means to heal and decompress, if only for a few moments. It helps bring a community together, and that’s what the movie itself shows, the connections forged that unite different age groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and personal philosophies for the sake of a single, insignificant act of goodwill. I mean, ultimately the biggest amount of “growth” we see is when Clyde returns home, having lost an arm, only to find that Bella has hooked up with one of the other guys, but it turns out that he’s such a talented singer that Duxbury cedes the male vocal lead to him, and the show itself is changed from a straight vocal oratorio into something more akin to opera, with Gerontius being a wounded veteran and the Angel who saves him being a war nurse. It’s a change that infuriates Elgar himself (Simon Russell Beale), but it’s an amazing bit of creative inspiration brought about because the whole town needs a way to release their pain.
Fiennes does a terrific job in the lead role, even if the script doesn’t give him all that much to work with. He’s the largest voice against the war, and violence in general, but a lot of what he says is pretty surface level, poignant but not exactly profound. The rest of the cast, particularly Okereke, have their moments of brilliance as well, and appropriately, the music is absolutely wonderful. This is the very textbook definition of a “feel-good movie.” No real lessons are learned, and ultimately nothing of consequence changes when it’s all said and done. In fact we see the realities of war happening in the background throughout the story, puncturing the few moments of levity. But as the movie itself notes, sometimes life is just shitty, and when it is, we need the arts to show us something beautiful and hopeful. That’s exactly what The Choral does.
Grade: B+
***
And that’s it, everybody! I’ve finally cleared the backlog! All that’s left to do is sit back, relax, and frantically type out my kneejerk reactions to the Oscars tomorrow night. Join me then!
Join the conversation in the comments below! Did you see either of these films? Which did you prefer? Should more American actors try their hands at foreign films? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!
I Actually Paid To See This 